Integrated circuit (IC) technologies are constantly being improved. Such improvements frequently involve scaling down device geometries to achieve lower fabrication costs, higher device integration density, higher speeds, and better performance. Along with the advantages realized from reducing geometry size, improvements are being made directly to the IC devices. One type of IC device is an image sensor device that includes a pixel-array for detecting light and recording an intensity (brightness) of the detected light. The pixel-array responds to the light by accumulating a charge, for example the more light, the higher the charge. The accumulated charge is then used (for example, by other circuitry) to provide a color and brightness for use in a suitable application, such as a digital camera. One type of image sensor device is a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor device. CMOS image sensor devices are used for sensing a volume of light projected toward a surface of a substrate (which supports the image sensor circuitry of the CMOS image sensor device). The pixel-array is located at a pixel-array region of the substrate, and other circuitry including logic processing and power is located at a peripheral region of the substrate. Due to device scaling, improvements to CMOS technology are continually being made to further improve image quality of image sensor devices. In one example, the transistors and image sensors in the pixel-array region are sensitive to substrate leakage current. Substrate leakage current can cause white pixels or dark current, which are undesirable. The substrate leakage current limit for the transistors in the peripheral region is higher than that for the pixel-array region as the pixel-array region transistors and photodiodes are more sensitive to substrate leakage current. Although existing CMOS image sensor devices and methods of fabricating CMOS image sensor devices have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, as device scaling down continues, they have not been entirely satisfactory in all respects.